Zeitguised's "Candy" ident.

Thirty-somethings who complain about MTV’s passage from a network that used to broadcast day-long rotations of the latest music videos to a channel that airs lengthy marathons of My Super Sweet 16 and The Hills are missing two points: one, their passage into adulthood; and two, the music video’s migration to YouTube.

But these are points that aren’t lost on MTV. Despite bloggers’ continued declarations of the network’s irrelevance, MTV still beams its teen-oriented messaging into 578 million households in 162 countries and 33 languages worldwide. It’s also expanded to include fashion, launching a clothing line at Zara in March, and gaming – the über-successful Rock Band is published by MTV Games and Electronic Arts.

So in reviewing its brand positioning, MTV decided it was time to make a clear declaration of what it is and what it isn’t: it is an international pop culture brand; it isn’t, and isn’t trying to be, broadcast’s version of an online video streaming site.

“We wanted to find a way to create a distance between what you can see on YouTube and what you can see on TV, especially on MTV,” says the network’s VP of creative Roberto Bagatti about the starting point for MTV International’s brand refresh.

The “identity reboot”, as the network has dubbed it, launched July 1 with an initial six-ident package directed by Sheffield-based studio Universal Everything, with a further 10 scheduled to launch in two phases after September 1. MTV tasked UE with raising the bar in terms of production values – broadcast’s primary advantage over online – and creative execution. UE responded by collaborating with an international roster of designers and studios – Tronic, New York; Realise, London; Russia’s Maxim Zhestkov; and London- and Stuttgart-based Zeitguised – to create multimedia idents that revolve around MTV’s newly established concept of “pop x 1,000%.”

“MTV has effectively moved into a channel which is not only about music anymore but all sorts of youth-oriented entertainment. In that sense, it’s essentially about pop culture,” says Bagatti. “Looking at [the brand] as this international container of pop culture, we started looking at the fact that it’s not only a container, but an amplification and a celebration of the idea of pop that goes through anything from [shows such as] The Osbournes and Tila Tequila to beyond the screen. The idea of ‘pop x 1,000%’ was to try and amplify this idea through the idents.”

It was also a way to find a cultural connector across the 64 channels outside of the US that the refresh will touch. Bagatti says the team, which comprises MTV’s creative directors, its Milan-based World Design Studio and UE, decided that applying the “x 1,000%” formula to emotions was the key to giving the idents a universal feel.

“It’s like a modern day Pop Art revival in a way,” explains UE founder Matt Pyke. “‘Adrenaline x 1,000%’ or ‘cuteness x 1,000%’. We had two main criteria: because of the global audience we had to avoid using language, and we also had to steer clear of focusing on a particular ethnic group. It had to feel truly international and one way of doing that was by conveying things on a more emotive, abstract level.”

In MTV’s opinion, there was one element of the brand that didn’t need a refresh, although it definitely needed to go up for review: the logo.

MTV’s logo has gone through countless treatments: textures, designs, half-tones and zebra stripes. For the refresh, the team chose a solid black-and-white treatment from a ’90s incarnation that will remain untouched.

“We have one of the most iconic logos for youth culture in the last 25 years,” says Bagatti. “It’s arguably on the same shelf as Coke, Nike or Apple. So we looked at it as something that’s sacred. Obviously not in the religious sense, but we do feel it’s immaculate in a way and it needs a stronger consistency than it has had in the past.” Q   

www.mtv.com/mtvinternational
www.universaleverything.com